The hitting face of a golf club should be kept clean if it is to function as intended. The grooves on the face of the club, be it wood or iron, bite into the surface of the ball and impart spin to it which is necessary if it is to fly accurately. Backspin is especially important when using the mid-to-short irons in terms of getting the ball to "hold" on the greens. A good clean surface, even on the wooden clubs, provides the friction against the dimpled exterior of the ball that enables the golfer to hook or fade it accurately which he or she could not do if the surface were dirty, grass-stained and slick. For this reason, many golfers or their caddies carry a wet towel which they use to wipe off the surface of the club after every shot.
Following each round, golfers who store their clubs in the bag room of the so-called "proshop" of a club are accustomed to having their clubs cleaned by one of the people who work there. This is a laborious and time-consuming task that calls for each club to be dipped in water, thoroughly scrubbed clean and dried before it is returned to the bag. Doing this for well over a hundred sets of clubs on a given day can truly become burdensome.